Survey reveals many area firms plan to hire in first half of 2012

Published 9:47 pm, Thursday, January 26, 2012

A survey of employers in the Fairfield County/New York Metropolitan region shows that there is a growing faith in an improving economy, and may are expanding their workforces.

Conducted in early November by Stamford-based Operations Inc. and Performance Solutions Group, the survey revealed that of 55 respondents, 54 percent expect to be hiring in the first half of 2012, and less than 4 percent plan to reduce their workforce.

The results compare favorably to a similar study a year ago showing that far fewer were planning to hire people.

"It is certainly encouraging to see that the majority are planning to hire," said David Lewis, chief executive officer of OperationsInc., a human resources consulting firm. "This represents a significant improvement of the same time last year when our survey showed closer to 30 percent planning to hire for 2011."

While the survey portends good news on the hiring front, it also reflects a concern across the country -- an insufficient talent pool for some jobs.

Close to 50 percent of respondents claim that a lack of available talent prevents them from filling open positions.

"The 50 percent of survey respondents who find difficulty filling positions due to lack of available talent underline the structural unemployment problem in this country," said Wil Brewer, president of Performance-Solutions-Group. "It keeps the unemployment rate high, prevents income from translating into consumer demand and continues to inhibit economic growth."

Rather than train someone to fill a position, most companies prefer continuing the recruiting process for several months in search of an experienced applicant, Lewis said.

In some cases, the inability to fill positions requiring technical, science or mathematics skills can be attributed to an unattractive salary, said William Alpert, professor of economics at the Stamford branch of the University of Connecticut.

"It's a national problem. We're not graduating engineers and technical degrees to staff the jobs," he said. "Companies would have to pay higher salaries than they do abroad. The math degrees are going to Wall Street."

Despite the improvement in hiring plans, the surveyed revealed that 38 percent of respondents indicate that uncertainty about the future affects their willingness to hire, while 25 percent said they lack infrastructure (management and facilities) to manage more staff.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they expect to outsource some functions in 2012.

Commercial real estate brokers have said that a significant decline in office vacancy rates in Fairfield County will not occur until companies make a concerted effort to expand staffs, requiring more space.

The inability or unwillingness of companies to add staff and take more space led to an office vacancy rate of 22.1 percent in Fairfield County in the fourth quarter, down from 22.7 percent in the same period in 2010, according to the Stamford office of Jones Lang LaSalle.

Lewis said 120 companies participated in the survey last year, and most of the 55 that responded this year were among them.

"Some could argue that it's a little light, but we feel very comfortable because it matched others like it with 500 or 600 respondents that were done across the country," he said.

In the Stamford-Bridgeport corridor, many of the job gains between November 2010 and November 2011 came in education and health services (1,600 jobs) and leisure and hospitality (900 jobs), according to the state Department of Labor.